March 1, 2015--God on Trial: The Polyphonic Text

By Rev. Emily Joye Reynolds

Job 1:20-22

Sometimes when I listen to our cultural conversations about God, not just in the Church, but in the culture at large, I'm confused. Sometimes when I listen to the music of our tradition, particularly in the first service, but even in here, sometimes, I'm confused. Sometimes when I read the Bible and try to study who God is, how God is portrayed in and through the scriptures, I'm confused. Sometimes when I reflect on my own life experience, how God has shown up over my 33 years, I'm confused. I'm confused because most of the time, it doesn't make sense. Doesn't add up. Doesn't compute.

Theology is not like cooking, or putting together furniture from IKEA, or paint by number. The instruction manuals, the discourse, the resounding claims of truth, when it comes to God, don't lead to some neat and tidy conclusion. There doesn't seem to be an end product, no matter how many of our conservative brethren try to convince us that it's as simple as believing in Jesus Christ in your heart and professing that he is Lord aloud with your lips. In fact, I've found the more you seek, the more you realize you don't know. And not knowing, while a very human experience, can also lead to tremendous anxiety.

The season of Lent is a time of wandering in the Wilderness, intentionally as Christians. For 40 days and 40 nights, we, like Christ, take intentional time and space to honor the trials, the tests, the straight up hard knocks of human life. One of the most common wilderness experiences in human life is not knowing. Specifically not knowing about God, about what is of Ultimate Concern (to use Tillich's phrase). Not knowing who put us here and why and what it all means and how we're supposed to respond. Mind you, I'm not talking about innocent ignorance or the shadows of doubt. I'm talking about the tremendous anxiety that can come when our life experience and what we've known to be true or don't know to be true come crashing in on us. I'm talking about uncertainty that can drive us to the brink of madness. Cognitive dissonance of the highest, threatening order.  Times when not knowing isn't okay, when we demand, body and soul, answers. And what happens, both spiritually and materially, when those answers don't come no matter how hard we seek them.

Today we begin a series of accompanying Job through his wilderness experience. This series will end at Easter, but my hope is that the Book of Job will haunt you and hold you throughout your life. And that in your moments of crashing uncertainty, in your own periods of wilderness, you will return to this text, as a faithful companion. Because if nothing else, and there is so much more, this book of the Bible, offers affirmation to those who are thirsty and cannot ultimately be satisfied. There is no tidying up the paradoxes this text kicks up and acknowledges. There is no theological winner to be had here. And while like I said, that kind of not knowing can drive us to hopelessness and pain at times, there is also something beautiful about biblical confirmation that we aren't the first and won't be the last.

At the end of this series, we are going to try something new. I want to let all of you know about it now so you can start preparing yourselves for how you participate in it. We are going to do a communal, improvisational enactment of a courtroom scene with all the characters from the Book of Job. God will be on trial--hence the name of the series. So as we go along, these next 5 weeks, pay attention to what character grabs you the most. Which character gets under your skin and irritates you the most, or strikes you admirable and worthy of defending?Absolutely every character is up for grabs, yes even God. I want you to choose a character in the next few days and stick with that character throughout Lent. Listen to the sermons with an ear for that character. Do study on your own when you're not in Church.

This is a way of moving with scripture that takes it from the abstract head and places it into the spiral of the heart. If most of you are willing to participate, I guarantee our community will not be the same after this series, and you will never think about the Book of Job or not think about the Book of Job the same, either. In fact, my hunch is that this experience actually has the capacity to change how we read the Bible, think about our tradition, and interact with God--which is all kind of a big deal--so I want to invite yall to go in here. Go.all.in. I'm also invested in taking this book back from the mainstream portrayal of it because it's white-washed and weak. So: put everything you think you know or have heard about the book of Job on hold and let's get busy diving in for ourselves. I'm inviting us to embark on a communal spiritual discipline for Lent together. You with me?

Calendar date for the trial.

Okay. Here's the ark of the story.

Job is a wealthy, privileged man living at a time of agricultural prosperity. Like most patriarchs of the Bible his wealth and privilege come in the form of property ownership. He is the master of his house and his house in on land that he owns, full of humans and animals that he owns. He's married and has seven sons and three daughters. The second sentence of the story tells us in no uncertain terms that Job is "blameless and upright." The opening chapter uses very specific language to let us know that Job is faithful not just on Earth but before God.

All is going swimmingly for ole Job until the Accuser of the Divine Council comes before God. The two of them engage in an ego-driven challenge. God actually starts the challenge by boasting about Job. The Accuser who, duh, is an accuser, challenges God by essentially claiming that Job is only faithful to God because God's been faithful to Job. "Does Job fear God for nothing?" the Accuser asks. Then the Accuser offers to spike Job's punch, so to speak, to see if his faithfulness is the real deal. God gives the Accuser all power to mess with Job--except for causing his death, the Accuser can do anything he wants to bring misery on Job. This is what he proceeds to do for the next chapter and a half. Job’s servants die. His animals are killed. And his children's lives are taken because of a "natural disaster."

We as readers know something that Job does not. Job doesn't know that God and the Accuser are caught up in some big cosmic dual; he just thinks that one day, out of nowhere, as if it's some natural thing in life, he loses everything except his health and his wife. But that comes next. The first round of loss comes and goes and Job refuses to blame or curse God. The Accuser returns to God and brings about round two, saying "Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives." This time the Accuser causes boils to rise on Job's skin, "from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head." At this point, Job's wife intervenes and suggests that Job ought to "curse God and die." But he will not. He rebukes his wife but holds his tongue from sinning against God in response to his suffering.

Next three friends come to visit Job, and can't even recognize him after all this loss and sickness. They perform traditional rituals of grief and loss, then "sat with him on the ground, seven days and seven night, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great." Friends that know how shut up at the right time. What a gift, right? Yeah, but not for long.

The next chunk of the book of Job--and it's a big chunk--is a bunch of speeches from various people. Job's cursing of the day he was born starts in Chapter 3, and then following are speeches by his friends, mostly trying to explain why what's happened to him has happened to him. Not helpful. Job responds with more aggravation, questioning and wrestling. He refuses to accept half-baked answers, refuses to be consoled by nonsense, even if its non-sense dripping with the God language. Later an anonymous dude named Elihu shows up, quoting Job and refuting his earlier speeches. God shows up after that and gives a speech from a whirlwind basically telling Job that his tiny-brain cannot comprehend the Divine Life so his questions are short-sided. God never takes ownership for the calamity that he intentionally brought upon Job. Job, after having heard from God, admits that he doesn't know what he doesn't know and gives a mysterious kind of repentance with his words. God proceeds to let Job's friends know that they were all full of crap, restores Job's "fortunes" twofold and Job goes on to live an even more "blessed" life than he had before. The End.

But not really.

Why is this one of the most popular stories in the Bible? Why does Job’s character hold such prominence in the timeless human mind?  Why does this story stay with us and play with us, confuse, confound and console us?

Biblical scholars have referred to the Book of Job as a "Polyphonic Text." What does polyphonic mean? Poly = many. Phonic = sound/sounds of speech. Right here in this one book of the Bible, we've got many voices. It's a polyphonic book. And let me be clear: it's not just the voices of the characters that are at play here. As we read this book, we are hearing the voices of the authors, their culture, their history, and the interpretations of Job we've inherited implicitly and explicitly throughout our own lives.

Now, if you think about it, "multiple voices" have a mixed wrap in our society. If people hear "mixed voices" in their heads, we often label them, medicate them, and some of them we put away because we consider them dangerous. But when it comes to an egalitarian way of doing things in community, many voices, at the table, or in the circle, or in the kitchen is considered an imperative. Right? We appear to have lots of desire for what's Polyphonic when it comes to community, but less when it comes to the individual. But what about when it comes to our notions of God?

I mentioned earlier in the sermon that part of what's so troubling about human life sometimes is the not knowing. I'm going to push that further. Sometimes when it comes to God, the competing voices in our heads, in our communities and in our traditions, can be deeply disturbing. Those of you who have recently exited Evangelical Christianity are particularly caught up in these questions. Those of us who have been harmed by Christianity's historic intolerance and persecution of the queer are particularly caught up in these questions. Those of us who are learning new concepts, ideas, and realities outside of our former world-views and spiritual frameworks are particularly caught up in these questions. Questions like: Who is right? Who is wrong? Who speaks in truth? Who speaks in the tongues of mortals? Who is trustworthy and who is worth chucking? How do we know? Why does it matter? Does it actually matter? Or is it all relative?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

That's the point of polyphonic texts, but more precisely, this polyphonic life. It's about those questions. It's about the process of hearing the many voices and wrestling. That's the invitation from and in my opinion the point of The Book of Job. I'm not here to tell you that all voices are worth obeying, not in the Book of Job, and not in real life, but they are all worth listening to and trying to understand. That's what the religious journey is all about. So, pilgrims and doubters and sinners and seekers divine, here's a challenge for you to hold and practice during this Lenten season inside and outside of Church, inside and outside of the Book of Job: listen to all the voices, seek to understand them, and when it's impossible to get it "right" or to arrive at a final conclusion, bless yourself because you stand in 2000+ years of wisdom wrestling with itself and you'll blend in among precious, beautiful, flawed and foolish company.

Amen.

March 8, 2015--God on Trial: 3s Company

by Rev. Emily Joye Reynolds

Job 2:11-13

Job 8:2-6

I've been preaching at FCC long enough now that I'm not sure which stories I've already told in my sermons. If some of you have already heard this one, my apologies, however it's such an important one, both for me, personally, and in terms of instructing spiritual companionship that I'm going to offer it again.

When my father got sick in 1994, I was 13 years old. I don't know how many of you remember being 13, but what I remember is the tectonic change. The bridge between later childhood and adolescence is a journey fraught with all kinds of physical and emotional swings. Puberty makes your body get all sensationally different. Social arrangements built on the hierarchies of athleticism and beauty and heteronormativity began to emerge. I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror. I didn't like the friends I'd grown up with. School felt like an exercise in torture. My parents were exhaustingly embarrassing. And then my dad got sick. And he got sick fast. When I look back it feels like his early symptoms, diagnosis, descent into a coma and final death took place in the blink of an eye. But in reality it took about a year and a half for all that to happen. Like I said, my world was already on tilt. So throw a parent dying into the equation and you've got massive destabilization.

My parents had this friend from church named Maureen. She was a white, middle aged lesbian. Quiet. Nose down, work hard type. Medium stature with salt and pepper hair. Tender in her speech and tragic in her loneliness. I'd gotten used to her over years of dinner parties at the house, coffee in courtyard after church rendezvous. She was part of my parent's inner circle. And so in the final weeks of my father's life, she was around quite a bit. Three days before my dad died a nurse had let us know that his time was winding down. We knew the end was near. Everyone had feelings about that except for me. I felt entirely numb. I walked out of the bedroom into the back porch and just sat there. Maureen followed me. With a deck of cards. "Wanna play?" she asked holding up the deck. I nodded. I was good at speed. It'd take my mind off things. It was 8 oclock in the morning when we started our first round. When I came to, we'd probably played more than fifty games of speed. It was mid-afternoon. We hadn't said a word other than the occasional "wanna shuffle?" or "hold on; I gotta go to the bathroom."

When she got up to leave, I had this immense sadness at the thought of her departure. In fact, I felt terrified of her leaving. It was the only thing I could concretely feel. Here my dad was, down the hall dying, which I couldn't feel anything about. And this "friend of the family" gets up to leave the house and I'm a mess? That all makes sense to me in retrospect. She was the one person who knew how to take care of me back then. She offered nothing but presence. No words. No justification. No silly platitudes. Just presence. Everything in my life was changing. Some of that change was "normal" but a lot of it was change that I wouldn't choose. Her steady, staying body represented exactly what I needed. Something to remain. Something that would draw near and stay close without shifting.

One morning and afternoon. Round after round of cards. Maureen taught me more about spiritual care than any book I've read, class I've taken or experience I've had since. I have no idea what happened to Maureen. Our family's lost touch after some years. I don't even remember her last name, but I can tell you that day is probably the single, biggest influence on the way I do pastoral care. She taught me the lesson that I believe the authors of Job are trying to teach us.

After the attack on Job's health in Chapter 2, Job's wife tells him to "Curse God and die" which we will get to in the next couple of weeks. Immediately after this, Job's friends come to town. It tells us that "they met together to console and comfort him." They enact rituals of grief and mourning. And then "they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great."

Job had the audacity to open his mouth. The friends do so very very well until Job starts expressing his pain, his anguish, his rage and bewilderment. If they'd just stayed with him on the ashes, lingering in silence and presence, it would have been fine. But no. The next, like 20 chapters of this book, are a big ole back and forth between Job and his friends. Reading it is like being face palmed over and over. It's painful. I mean, Job's situation is painful enough, but then the friends make it worse.

But what's so queerly interesting to me about this section of the book is what the authors of the book are up to. Let me be specific. Those of us reading the story know that the friends are wrong. What they're wrong about I'll get to in a minute. But they are so very very convinced that they are right. And we know that they are wrong. So the authors have tipped us off to a dynamic the friends are unaware of, which is Job's innocence. Job knows he's innocent. God knows Job is innocent. We the readers know that Job is innocent. But the friends don't. They are so sure, so certain, so unwaveringly committed to the notion that Job deserves what he got, that they simply cannot let him go on about his lot without challenging him at every opportunity. They are more convinced with preserving the "seeming" integrity of God than hearing their friend's experience. And because of this they represent orthodoxy.

Every character in the book of Job represents a certain strand of the biblical or theological tradition of the Israelites. The friends represent orthodoxy. What does orthodoxy mean? Ortho = right Doxy = doctrine.  We talked last week about Job being a "poly phonic" text meaning a book of many voices. Orthodoxy would seek to silence those voices in favor of one voice, one truth, one notion, one way of thinking, one way of believing, one way of understanding. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar represent the orthodoxy in the tradition of the Israelites. And orthodoxy is positioned in this story in response to suffering.

I want to tell you a bit about the content of biblical orthodoxy in order for this to make sense. Throughout a lot of the Hebrew Bible there's this doctrine known as "temporal retribution." It's in the book of Deuteronomy. It's in the canon of history portrayed in books such as 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings. Its completely apparent in the "Wisdom" literature such as Proverbs and Psalms. Temporal retribution is a fancy term for divine influenced cause and effect. You do good, God rewards. You do bad, God punishes. It's very very simple, actually. The notion is that all things are set up, by God and for God, so that every thing, large and small, is a matter of cause and effect. If bad things are happening, it's because something caused punishment. If good things are happening, it's because something caused reward. If the crops are abundant, it's because God has caused it to rain as reward for good behavior. If the land is dry, it's because God has caused a drought to punish bad behavior. It all happens under a cosmic law that God has set up and perpetually enforces. Temporal retribution. Divine cause and effect.

We see modern day versions of this all the time. When natural disasters happen, there are a bunch of theologians who are willing to step forward and claim that a particular kind of social wickedness caused that Tsunami or Earthquake. When someone we love gets a good job or gets pregnant after trying for a long time, we quickly turn to the language of blessing. We claim that their faithfulness in this life has set them up to deserve such a blessing. If they're a really really "good" person, we emphasize how much they 'deserve' to have good things happen to them.

To put myself on blast here, for a second, whenever I hear that someone has gotten a cancer diagnosis one of my very first thoughts is: what kind of unconscious toxin has gotten lodged in that person's body? Is it unresolved trauma from childhood? Is it an environmental thing, like a bad marriage or an abusive boss? I still to this day will often claim that certain repressive tendencies in my father are what caused tumors to spread throughout his gut. You see, I try to seek to identify and name the cause of the material effect.

The problem here though is what we are implying with this kind of thinking. It usually puts all the responsibility and all the blame on whoever is in question without taking larger realities, including God, into question. Which is what Job refuses to do.

We are in "temporal retribution" kinds of thinking when we assume that someone has done something to bring about their current situation. We are in "temporal retribution" kind of thinking when we secretly or explicitly say things like "well, if she'd been a better wife, maybe he wouldn't have had an affair" or "everybody knows she's hard to work with; that's why she got fired" or "if young black men stopped breaking the law, the police wouldn't be shooting them at higher rates."

Job's friends represent this kind of thinking. They essentially tell Job that none of that calamity would have fallen on him unless he did something to deserve it because God has set the world up that way. Eliphaz, in chapter 8 says to Job "Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert the right?" These are rhetorical questions, of course. He goes on to say "If your children sinned against him, he delivered them into the power of their transgression." So let's stop right there. Eliphaz is literally claiming that all of Job's kids have died because they sinned against God. But we the reader know this isn't true. Job's kids are dead because God gave Satan the power to take their lives. In fact, we know that Job took extra precaution, according to the biblical law, to protect his children. Chapter 1 verse 5 tells us that Job would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings in accordance with the number of children he had, just IN CASE one of them had sinned. We know Eliphaz is wrong. We know Job's children are innocent and dead, that Job is innocent and barely alive. But Eliphaz is positive he's right.

What are we to make of this?


Here's my hunch. It's too easy to make the friends of this story the villains. I mean, they are. But. We know they're wrong and that they don't know they're wrong. At the end of the story, in chapter 42, God appears and speaks to Eliphaz saying "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has." I mean it's too obvious. It's too blatant. I'm not trying to let them off the hook. They clearly victimize Job. But what if they are victims too? Stay with me...


Remember how I said that Maureen's way of being with me was lifesaving and is probably the single, biggest influence on the way I do pastoral care? Remember how she was able, by quiet presence alone, to make me feel in the midst of oblivion and grief? Maureen touched the soul of a 13 year old girl in such a way that that 13 year old girl turned adult woman pastor would then go on to touch many other souls in a similar way. I can only pray that I've been half the loving presence to all others that she was to me that day.

Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar don't get to be, don't get to do, don't get to give in the way that Maureen did. Because while their so busy preserving orthodoxy, the possibility for incarnating God's love is lost. While they're busy trying to preserve the reputation of God, busy trying to persuade Job about the traditional understanding of God, the felt presence of God goes undetected, which makes them impossible to actually listen to and believe. You can say words about God and do words about God and be words about God all day long, but if the presence of your personhood doesn't match those words it means nothing.

It says in 1 Cor 13: "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." Never a truer word. People preserving orthodoxy lose because they're more concerned with doctrine than they are with love. Job's friends cared more about tradition than experience. Because people like that are so devastatingly annoying, because they wreck sacred moments with their need to be right, I think we forget that their own humanity is lost in those moments. They are victims in the midst of their victimizing.

And I wanna push us further. I think we are them. Often. More than we'd like to admit. We get into cause and effect thinking with people we love and we do it to ourselves too. Think about when something hard, bad, painful or grief-worthy has happened to you. Have you not sought out the reasons why, and wondered if something you'd done had caused it? Or maybe you're one of those who wonders if you're just inherently bad and so anything hard that happens to you is deserved.

My point beloved is that we are Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. And this text is lovingly inviting us to consider what that means. Remember, they knew what to do at first. They knew to share in Job's pain, to make supplication through ritual, to sit quietly with him on the ash heap. But they also messed up and got all argumentative when they should have shut up and remained present. This text puts both of those tendencies in front of us and reminds us that one is better than the other in response to suffering. This text is inviting us to be the wise version of those three that showed up to be with Job in rituals of grief and in solidarity filled silence. The version of them that knew how to be present in body and spirit without having to defend or respond.

Sometimes it's sitting together, quietly, in the ashes. Sometimes it’s bringing over a deck of cards. Sometimes it's eating ice cream and watching funny movies. Sometimes it’s holding someone while they shed tears for hours. Sometimes it’s showing up at the front door with a filled crock-pot. Sometimes it’s sitting in the discomfort of not having the answers but offering the most loving eye contact you can possibly muster.

It's loving presence. Offered freely. For as long as it takes.

February 22, 2015--Truth & Titus: What About Your Friends

By: Rev. Emily Joye Reynolds

Koinonia, FCCBC

2.22.15

John 19:25b-28

Many of you were here on last Wednesday night when we did the "Imposition of Ashes" as is customary for the beginning of Lent. AshWednesday is a time of observing our mortality, the fact that we are finite beings, that we come from dust and to dust we shall return. It's an important day in the liturgical calendar year, because whereas Christmas and Easter connect us to stories about God and God's great, miraculous self, Ash Wednesday connects us to the very human dimensions of this here thing called life. One of the things that I most appreciate about Ash Wednesday is the reminder that I am going to die. I am going to die. I am. I don't know when, but it'll happen at some point. That reminder helps me get clear about what is important, what I want my lasting legacy to be, and how to get busy living at those intersections. But it also reminds me of something else, which to be honest, has greater urgency for me: the fact that every single person I love on this planet is going to die too.

<I want you to sit in your pew right now and think about the people you love most. Take just a few minutes, I'm going to give you some quiet. And think about the fact that your time with them is limited, that it will come to an end, in some cases, probably sooner than you think.>

Now there's a lot of youngish type people in Koinonia, and so I reckon that many of you, many of us, haven't had as many encounters with our mortality and the mortality of those we love as some of the elders in here. And so in some ways we are at a disadvantage. Because one thing I've noticed is the more people you lose, the more honest you get about the frailty of life. Now sometimes that can lead to a kind of paranoia and hyper-vigilance where you flail around fearing the death of everyone all the time. But more often than not, compounded losses result in holding life even more sacred because one understands time isn't guaranteed. And that, my dears, that holding life most sacred, and acting on that sacred in relationships because you know you don't have forever, is a gift.

One of Sojourner Truth's best friends was a woman by the name of Frances Titus. She was native to Battle Creek. She lived at a home on 113 Maple Street. She is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Like Sojourner, she was an ardent Abolitionist and Suffragist. Mrs. Titus was a fiercely loyal and diligent friend to Truth. As we close our study on Sojourner Truth's life today, as part of our celebration and honor of Black History Month, I want to focus on the relationship she and Titus had throughout but especially toward the end of Sojourner's life.

The two first met in 1856 during a Progressive Friends Meeting and while it's speculated that it was BFF at first sight, they wouldn't come to work closely together for another ten to fifteen years. During their mid-lives they came together on Abolitionism though those efforts looked very different pre and post Civil War. Sojourner Truth circulated all over the country giving lectures about the necessity of ending slavery as a former enslaved woman. Titus often supported her travels and even gave her help with a loan for her home during that time so Sojourner's family (kids and grand kids) had a good place to stay while Truth was lecturing across state lines. Later after the war Truth and Titus went to work in trying to help freedmen resettle and find work. Truth made every effort to seek out places for home-steading and employment all over the country, but mostly in Kansas, and the "West". In tight correspondence with Truth, Titus worked locally to make Battle Creek a place where freedman could resettle. She also eventually set up a school, in the old city hall building, where freed persons could learn basic writing, reading and arithmetic. She taught on Friday nights and on the Sabbath.

During the 1870s Titus worked mostly on Women's Suffrage emerging in Michigan. Francis was called to serve several national organizations hoping to get women the right to vote. She rubbed elbows and set stages for Susan B. Anthony and Kady Stanton. In 1874 an amendment to the Michigan constitution was drafted for women to vote thanks to the organizing of Titus and her many allies. It was sorely defeated state-wide but the margin of defeat was lower here in BC than other places. At that time, Truth was in Kansas trying to implement strategy for the great Exodus when she believed Black people would leave the South in droves in hopes of greater economic opportunity. That migration happened later, after Truth had grown ill due to age, and despite all of  her spirit-filled labor, she was not able to see the fruits. Truth and Titus reunited, both with their hearts in their hands, in Battle Creek after this sense of political and social defeat, to find each other anew. They were huge sources of comfort to one another in the midst of what felt like massive grief at the state of cruelty and injustice around the nation and here in Michigan.

Sojourner fell ill at some point later that year and became confined. Frances Titus took that time to edit and re-write certain parts of Truth's autobiography. During that time writing and story-telling became a huge part of their bond. Eventually Titus would bind and print those books and use them to support Sojourner financially. When Sojourner got well again and hit the road to speak around the country, Frances went with her as business manager and personal secretary. Eventually they would reengage the work of getting food, shelter and jobs to refugees resettling out of the South. Titus used her privilege to influence the affluent in Battle Creek to send resources to where Truth organized in the West. But right as their efforts started making real impact, Truth got sick again and returned home. From there out Frances took care of her bodily and correspondence needs. After Sojourner Truth died in November of 1883 Titus, as a dear, life-long friend will always do, amped up her loyalty to Truth by raising money for a beautiful, specialized hand-crafted marble tombstone. She then commissioned a special painting of Sojourner to be mounted at Albion College. And republished a posthumous edition of Sojourner's autobiography which included a memorial chapter and her favorite song entitled "We are Going Home."

Yall, let me tell you something profound. Sojourner Truth's funeral was right here in this Church. We worship on Holy Ground. The Rev. Reed Stuart--who I consider a spiritual ancestor--officiated Sojourner's funeral and would officiate Frances' funeral in 1894. They are known in Battle Creek history as giants of abolitionism and women's suffrage. But today I want us to think of them, and call upon their names, as spiritual giants.

What we are able to do for each other at the end of life has everything to do with the foundations we lay with each other throughout life. Sojourner and Frances were activist colleagues, Quaker companions, financial partners, literary pals, citizens of the same city, women who loved each other, across racial lines, loved each other body and soul, over decades, in the midst of an era when women were supposed to be wives and mothers and nothing else. Even when they didn't live in the same state or serve the same exact cause, they remained in contact. They returned to each other throughout their lives. They lived and died with and for each other. Their relationship was transgressive, non-normative, beautiful and holy. Glory be to God.

In the final chapters of John we see a similar relationship between Jesus and "the disciple who Jesus loved." In the 26th - 28th verses of Chapter 19 of the Gospel of John it tells us that in order for everything to be finished, Jesus needed to know that his most beloved disciple and his mother would take care of each other after he was gone. Upon seeing the beloved disciple and his mother standing side by side, watching him die, he says "Woman, here is your son" and "Here is your Mother" to the beloved disciple, basically informing them that they would have to love him now, after his death, by loving each other. Jesus entrusted that continued work and bond of love, a posthumous love, a resurrective love, a spiritual love to those two because they'd earned it during his lifetime. They were called upon for his ministry after he was gone because they saw to his ministry while he was alive.

It begs the question of all of us: are we living into the love of friends and family with such profound, abiding loyalty? I bet Frances didn't question whether Sojourner loved her after Sojourner was gone. I know Mary and the Beloved Disciple didn't question Jesus' love for them. How could they? The active, fidelity between them during life layed the question to rest.

So much of the time when I do funerals for families and loved ones there is too much left unanswered, too much left unsaid, too much left undone. Don't let that be your story, my flock. Don't let that be your truth. Let the relationships of Jesus, the Beloved Disciple and Mary, let the relationship of Sojourner Truth and Frances Titus remind us all that we are from dust and to dust we shall return, but in the meantime, the work of love--long-standing loyalty, affection, service, support, body and soul love--is calling.

Amen.